Thanks. For the record, I agree with what Expat has written too. But I was sort of taken by surprise when he corrected my view on Te/Fi, which was only wrong I think because I was too biased towards Irrational. So now I want to clear this up and figure out the little details
I have no problem with splitting this off into a new thread if that would be better.
Anyway, as I understand Expat, he seems to want Fi to tell him which are good Te sources. I figure he needs the good Te to take the best actions and keep control over where things are going (Ni/Se). It's as if the world would be Te/Fi and he sees Te sources here and there, some good, some bad, but each with certain (hidden) traits that Fi tries to get a taste for and map to for instance reliability. What he wants from his dual is some help in picking up the Fi in that world, especially in places where he has no experience and doesn't know what to expect from someone for instance. Without his dual he'll want to aggregate lots of Te from many different sources to get a feel for what is reliable. With his dual he'd feel more comfortable skipping some sources thereby going a lot faster. It's a more passive (accepting) kind of attitude towards Te/Fi. His Te/Fi perception is like a compass he uses to orient himself, i.e. to guide his actions in an essentially Te/Fi world. (Is that at all correct?)
I would expect Niffweed to see Te/Fi somewhat differently, in the same way that I see Fe/Ti differently from an EIE. An EIE's strength is in seeing what kind of effects individual actions (Ni/Se), including their own, have on the emotional atmosphere, i.e. for them the world itself is Fe/Ti and their actions have longlasting effects on it. My IEI world on the other hand is Ni/Se, a world of impacts, tendencies and potential consequences. The strength of my Fe is therefore not in picking up *the* emotional atmosphere, but in picking up how everyone is individually impacted by it, that is how everybody personally interprets and responds to it. Or in this thread's terminology, my Fe's primary focus is not on what can generally be read between the lines of some message to get a feel of the emotional atmosphere, but rather on what everybody else individually tends to read between the lines in that message. The better I get to know someone, the better I can start to predict and anticipate their response (Ti comes into play here). And more, by talking in on them, I can have an effect on their disposition in a particular situation, without the situation itself, its emotional atmosphere, changing at all. So, Fe/Ti for me is not out there in the world, but exists only in my own and other people's heads.
Likewise, I think Niffweed would see Te/Fi more as personal interpretation too, but I don't fully get the Te/Fi combo yet apparently to see how exactly. I think he does see it that way though, because there's a subtle difference in the way the two of you express yourself. Expat seems to say "that other guy is an asshole". And Niffweed seems more inclined to say "I consider him an asshole". Another thing maybe is that he probably doesn't want his dual to pick up Fi for him, but rather wants him to double-check his Fi, keep an eye on it, maybe fill-in missing bits, in other words more of a teaching kind of attitude towards an Fi that wants to learn. (How high does this fly?)
If this sounds too much like gibberish, maybe I should try a different approach like, can you explain why LIE and ILI have a mirror relationship? Why does this happen:
I'd say the revising nature is related to what I said above. LIE and ILI make different assumptions on what can be taken as a given in the world versus what is individual interpretation. They each have a different attitude towards Ni/Se and Te/Fi. So, when one speaks from his base function, the other is going to want to double-check and perhaps revise that since he assumes it's a potentially biased personal interpretation, which is basically what happened in Expat's reply above to Niffweed who's talking from Ni (?).